72 Comments

this is what some of us has warned about for a very long time… the GPL death. Why would someone wanna pay for red hats stuff now?

2005-04-19 5:54 am

When they have a choice between free and commercial pay, they’ll go with the free version. It’s really sad that people need to resort to this tactic of providing free software by cloning a company’s product. Especially from a Linux company that is one of the leaders of Linux. If Red Hat falls, then CentOS falls.

2005-04-19 5:57 am

RedHat wont die from this, just like they didn’t when mandrake or countless other distro’s forked from them.

2005-04-19 6:07 am

Its called SUPPORT. Enterprise customers have differing needs compared to that of a bunch of kids in their basements.

2005-04-19 6:07 am

RedHat won’t die. The reason that RedHat Enterprise is such a good product is not because of the product, its because of its support. So what if the GPLd parts of their product are available, they’re support isn’t without paying.

2005-04-19 6:08 am

“Posted on 2005-04-19 06:07:17”

mine: “Posted on 2005-04-19 06:07:17”

lol two support based comments at the same time. Sorry I couldn’t resist but to point that out

2005-04-19 6:09 am

Well we use Centos ourselves too on a couple of (test) servers. But for the rest we use REAL RHEL, why? Companies want support + if everyone uses centos/whitebox etc etc RH can’t make new versions -> no more centos either

2005-04-19 6:12 am

First and most importantly: Red Hat would not exist were it not for the GPL!

Second, CentOS will not destroy Red Hat. Rather it will make Red Hat stronger. It gives students and other interested parties the ability to test the waters and learn. When it comes time to implement their high availability database cluster using Oracle 10g they will buy Red Hat because that is what is supported. When it comes time to set up their datacenter they will buy Red Hat because it is what is supported. Many if not most of the people using CentOS would not pay full fare to use Red Hat anyway.

2005-04-19 6:19 am

“this is what some of us has warned about for a very long time… the GPL death. Why would someone wanna pay for red hats stuff now?”

Do you believe that it is too hard to predict that a rebuild would come up when source rpms are provided freely?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not a product but a software subscription that ties you with support. There are other benefits like ISV relationships and certifications. If you dont want that any of these rebuilds might very well suit your needs

“It’s stolen RHAT IP, with a different name. ”

Its not stolen at all. I hate the term IP but everything included within RHEL is entirely open source and explicitly designed to allow these kinds of freedom. Please get your facts straight

this is what some of us has warned about for a very long time… the GPL death. Why would someone wanna pay for red hats stuff now?

”

Well you wouldn’t, because when you pay Red Hat money, you are paying for services, support and indemnification. You are not paying for software licenses.

”

It’s stolen RHAT IP, with a different name.

If only it was distributed over Kazza, it’d be true warez then.

”

Care to read the GPL and numerous other open source licenses? I am giving you the benefit of the doubt though in assuming you can read, you don’t seem to be someone with a high level of intellect. (Oh, btw, a clone is a clean room rewrite of the code so that it acts and looks the same, but isn’t the same. An example of this is ReactOS).

One thing that baffles me when you people troll about this subject…..could you explain to me how CentOS (as well as Whitebox and Scientific Linux) are in full compliance with Red Hat’s redistribution requirements and somehow stealing their IP at the same time?

2005-04-19 6:32 am

Why not to use Solaris 10 x86 which is commercial and for personal use for free?

I think that it is more stronger than Linux.

And DTrace and ZFS (128bit file system)?

2005-04-19 6:52 am

“Why not to use Solaris 10 x86 which is commercial and for personal use for free?”

Solaris is free for personal *and* commercial use. You just don’t get support for free. It is as if Redhat allows RHEL to be used for free without support. I won’t be suprised if Redhat would even allow this in the future.

2005-04-19 6:57 am

”

Why not to use Solaris 10 x86 which is commercial and for personal use for free?

I think that it is more stronger than Linux.

And DTrace and ZFS (128bit file system)?

”

Because not everyone switches to Solaris the second someone advertises it on an internet forum? Or, how about this.

An in-house developer wants to develop applications to run on Red Hat servers at work. Instead of paying Red Hat for another license for their home desktop, they instead install CentOS, develop the software, compile the RPMs, and then simply install them on RHEL. Or else because it is nice to download an RPM built for RHEL (almost all Linux software has a version built for RHEL) and be able to install it flawlessly on a CentOS system (I do this all the time). It is also useful for someone who wants to run Linux, have an incredibly long support cycle (talking about updates here), but doesn’t want to pay lots of money for it.

It is also great for if I want to put Linux on a family member’s computer (CentOS runs on my mom’s desktop) but they don’t want to upgrade every year or two to a new version of the OS.

The only thing I don’t like about RHEL/CentOS is that Red Hat has disabled Video4linux and bttv support in the kernel, therefore I am still trying to get my TV Tuner Card working (it works fine under Linux normally).

2005-04-19 7:14 am

”

The only thing I don’t like about RHEL/CentOS is that Red Hat has disabled Video4linux and bttv support in the kernel, therefore I am still trying to get my TV Tuner Card working (it works fine under Linux normally).”

Such things are usually done because its found to be lacking badly during testing and Red Hat decides that we cant support it. If we enable it and customers run into issues we would get loads of service requests to fix those problems. If and when upstream fixes it or Red Hat assigns developers to work on it we can support it reliably

2005-04-19 7:24 am

From what my understanding of redhats business is, is it makes its money off of support not the product itself. Example, no business in its right mind would trust itself to centos since it has no payed support, but redhat offers peace of mind that if something goes wrong it can be fixed by the multibillion dollar company.

2005-04-19 7:26 am

”

Such things are usually done because its found to be lacking badly during testing and Red Hat decides that we cant support it. If we enable it and customers run into issues we would get loads of service requests to fix those problems. If and when upstream fixes it or Red Hat assigns developers to work on it we can support it reliably

”

Personally I have never had problems with video4linux, but that is up to Red Hat….and not many people have TV Tuner Cards in servers anyways, so fair enough. Anyways, I just wanted to say I love the work that goes on at Red Hat (but I probably won’t buy from Red Hat, as their pricing is a bit overkill for my home desktop PCs).

Anyways, I noticed a lot of video4linux questions coming up on your forums (I did a Google Search of your website). Would you happen to know of a kernel RPM patch that would enable video4linux and bttv support? Thx!

Oh, and do me a favour since you work for Red Hat. Please explain the GPL/MPl/LGPL/etc. to the….erm…..trolls on this forum and explain to them how CentOS is not *stealing your IP*.

2005-04-19 7:51 am

Anyways, I just wanted to say I love the work that goes on at Red Hat (but I probably won’t buy from Red Hat, as their pricing is a bit overkill for my home desktop PCs).

“Would you happen to know of a kernel RPM patch that would enable video4linux and bttv support? Thx!

”

No idea. ask in the relevant mailing lists.

“Please explain the GPL/MPl/LGPL/etc. to the….erm…..trolls on this forum and explain to them how CentOS is not *stealing your IP*.”

The part about not stealing IP is already explained above by me. The licensing discussions do get tricky but I dont really want to get involved in that

2005-04-19 8:37 am

As someone mentioned…”gpl death”. RedHat has no IP because of their political stance and thus no value-added exclusive to RedHat itself.

I wonder if RedHat is seriously re-thinking their “free software” only stance. They should be worried.

2005-04-19 8:45 am

“RedHat has no IP because of their political stance and thus no value-added exclusive to RedHat itself. ”

Red Hat definitely has IP include copyrights and patents but its not exclusive to the company but available as Free software

“I wonder if RedHat is seriously re-thinking their “free software” only stance. They should be worried.”

You just need a strategy. RHEL is one such thing. there is no wavering towards the commitment of exclusively open source idea

2005-04-19 9:17 am

You just need a strategy. RHEL is one such thing. there is no wavering towards the commitment of exclusively open source idea

And then you wake up to find out your strategy isn’t working out, your stock is plummeting, you’re bleeding money left and right. You better believe there will be wavering.

I hope RedHat hurts bad so that people wake up to the fact that Services is not going to be enough.

2005-04-19 10:07 am

”

And then you wake up to find out your strategy isn’t working out, your stock is plummeting, you’re bleeding money left and right. You better believe there will be wavering. ”

Red Hat has been following the same strategy for a decade and you better believe me when I tell you that Red Hat’s open source strategy is not any gimmick

2005-04-19 10:19 am

How nice to see you spreading FUD again.

“I wonder if RedHat is seriously re-thinking their “free software” only stance. They should be worried.”

1. Without free software, no RedHat, something you seem to conveniently forget.

2. You provide no argument whatsoever about why they should be worried.

“And then you wake up to find out your strategy isn’t working out, your stock is plummeting, you’re bleeding money left and right. You better believe there will be wavering.”

There is only one problem with your “argument”.

RedHat isn’t bleeding money left and right but is profitable, so what is you point?

“I hope RedHat hurts bad so that people wake up to the fact that Services is not going to be enough.”

Ah, so if this is a fact, why do you have to hope?

Oh, it isn’t a fact at all, you provide nothing to back up your claim and on the contrary, it works for RedHat, that is, again, profitable.

Come on, this was not even a nice try, is that all you got?

2005-04-19 10:20 am

Well you wouldn’t, because when you pay Red Hat money, you are paying for services, support and indemnification. You are not paying for software licenses.

Is that the same reason why Linux will never be ready for anything? Because if the software isn’t ridicilously complex, it’s not possible to sell service and support?

Gee, Linux looks promising LoL

2005-04-19 10:37 am

”

Is that the same reason why Linux will never be ready for anything? Because if the software isn’t ridicilously complex, it’s not possible to sell service and support? ”

Every enterprise system requires support regardless of how easy it is. Either you can get the support in house or you could opt for someone else to do it for you.

Its not because that stuff is complex or it will break but you need hand holding on several things unless you are an expert. anybody who has worked on critical systems should be aware of this requirement

2005-04-19 11:21 am

what’s the difference between the “enterprise” linux distros and the normal ones?

bttv doesn’t get loaded as default doesn’t mean it can’t be loaded.You have to recompile your kernel (which is quite easy),”make menuconfig && make modules && make modules_install && make install”.Now you can issue “modprobe bttv” and you can watch/record TV if you have the appropiate applications installed.CentOS is merely meant to be a strong OS cloned if you want (which is a great compliment for RH) from RHEL for free,thus a corporate operating system.Doesn’t mean you can’t do the same as on for example Fedora (on the contrary).

Is that the same reason why Linux will never be ready for anything? Because if the software isn’t ridicilously complex, it’s not possible to sell service and support?

Gee, Linux looks promising LoL>

Write some system level software one day. Due to things like nuances in hardware, you can never have perfectly bug free code. It’s next to impossible. Companies like the fact that if their new raid card won’t work with card X also in the machine because such a configuration was never tested, or there’s some flaw with your cpu or chipset or whatever such that it doesn’t always operate as expected. It’s nice to have red hat, known linux experts ready to fix your software for no additional cost and throw some weight behind the problem. Windows, Solaris, OS X, they’re all very good operating systems and yet still…their respective parent companies still support them and offer support packages for that fateful day when the OS takes a dive.

Easier to use does not equate with needing less support. There’s a ton of funky hardware out there that doesn’t behave according to spec at all times. It’s really reassuring for your boss to know that if gee, this system takes a dive, we don’t have to pay our sys admin to debug it or hire expensive consultants.

2005-04-19 1:11 pm

“Fedora is basically RHEL beta distro”

No. its not. While the lifecyle may be low and can somewhat be extended by using fedoralegacy(.org), the key differences are in support and ISV. RHEL has a seperate beta testing team and Fedora follows its own test cycle.

2005-04-19 1:24 pm

True … there is a RH beta … that is a frozen point in time from Rawhide / Fedora / Previous RHEL sources.

Fedora is a free OS that RH helps support and they roll in the things they like from it into RHEL. It seems very similar to the SID, TESTING, STABLE Debian setup …

Rawhide is like SID … Fedora is like TESTING …. RHEL is like STABLE.

There certianly is a Beta cycle for RHEL .. which is seperate from Fedora (though contains much Fedora stuff).

And there is a Beta cycle for an upcoming release of Fedora that is seperate from Rawhide. Basically, the source is frozen and bugs / updates get worked out from that.

Not that there is anything wrong with that … RH is supporting Fedora with bodies and with servers / bandwidth to develope stuff that they can use in future RHEL products. That is good.

2005-04-19 1:47 pm

“Rawhide is like SID … Fedora is like TESTING …. RHEL is like STABLE. ”

People have been making such comparisons right since the Fedora project announcement was made. one of the differences between the above debian mechanism and the Fedora project release cycle is that testing is not an actual release and does not have any differences in the approach between it and stable nor do it have different set of packages.

2005-04-19 2:10 pm

When we started to use Linux at our company, we evaluated many Linux options. Management hasn’t reached the point where they trust Linux enough to migrate our Enterprise data on it, but we have quite a few Linux servers doing important tasks through out (email transport to Exchange, DNS, NTP, mrtg, etc.) But for what we are doing with Linux, we do not need enterprise level support. Thus while RHEL always seems to be an excellent capable modern operating environment, the price tag made sure it will never be a consideration at our company. Possible options we considered were Fedora, Mandrake, Debian, FreeBSD, Gentoo, and CentOS.

In the end, we decided to use CentOS because of it’s long support life and it’s similarity to RHEL. The existence of CentOS is a good thing for RHEL because now all our people are being trained on a clone of RHEL rather than alternatives to it. When we deploy some mission criticial system on Linux, where we need to hold a company accountable, we will purchase RHEL. The reasons why is that managing it will be basically the same as managing other systems (consistency.) We now have good experience in working with RHEL based systems (experience). And finally, we fully trust RHEL based on how stable CentOS has worked for us (trust).

Without CentOS, we most likely would have gone with Debian or FreeBSD. We would not have learned to trust Red Hat Linux and we would never consider purchasing licenses from Red Hat.

2005-04-19 2:11 pm

True … and the RHEL / Fedora / Rawhide is better (in my opinion).

There is a current developement cycle that is always on going (Rawhide) … a periodic Free OS release (Fedora) on a 4-6 month cycle (with 12-18 month lifetime) … kind of like throwing Ubuntu/Kbuntu in the mix with Debian … and an Enterprise Distro (on a 12-18 month release cycle with 60-84 month lifetime).

All CentOS does is provide a Free OS Build of the Enterprise Distro Sources … for deployment by people who do not need (or can not afford) RHEL support … but do need the 12-18 release cycle and 60-84 month lifetime.

If you need vendor support (or more help than is available on the CentOS Forums, IRC or Mailing-Lists), then RHEL is the distro for you.

Someone asked earlier … why not just use RHEL if it is free. RHEL is not available for free … if it was, there would be no need for CentOS.

The absolute cheapest you can get a non academic version of RHEL server is $349.00 per machine (per year) … and that only includes 30 days of real phone support. And there is not support for installation of that version (ES) on machines with more than 16gb ram or more than 2 CPUS (or on s390, 390x, or ppc). The cheapest AS (required for support on more than 2 CPUs, and s390, s390x, ppc installs) is $1499.00 (per year, per machine).

RH doesn’t offer a ppc workstation version with support exceot for AS … although CentOS ppc’s goal currently in beta) will be to install and work on ppc worstations as well (including Mac workstations).

2005-04-19 2:21 pm

”

The absolute cheapest you can get a non academic version of RHEL server is $349.00 per machine (per year) … and that only includes 30 days of real phone support. And there is not support for installation of that version (ES) on machines with more than 16gb ram or more than 2 CPUS (or on s390, 390x, or ppc). The cheapest AS (required for support on more than 2 CPUs, and s390, s390x, ppc installs) is $1499.00 (per year, per machine). ”

Your numbers are way off here. I cant provide you with the exact details for your right now but suffice to say that you can get cheaper and better deals depending on your requirements, number of deployments and deployment area

2005-04-19 2:24 pm

Exactly why I maintain that CentOS is doing RH far more help than hurt … and why I think we (the CentOS developement team ) are not a bunch of freeloaders.

I became a CentOS developer specifically because I needed test servers and non critical boxes (DNS, DHCP, SPAM scrubbing, fileservers etc.) that I didn’t want to pay $1499.00 per box.

Not to mention the other projects that are using CentOS to create a stable base for their products:

Be happy that there are enough distros in that one would fit into someone’s habits, and move them off another platform. More users can only really make things better, whether it’s for one distro or another. Every user has a different level of comfort, adn it’s nice to know there’s a distro that will probably fit into their needs. Not a single one of you can speak for all home users, all corporation needs, datacenter needs, etc. Group together and push the platform, not the customisations.

2005-04-19 3:44 pm

Although the Fedora Core home page http://fedora.redhat.com/ claims that FC will be released “about 2-3 times a year”, this statement hasn’t been backed up by the public release schedule at http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/ which shows that the gap between FC releases is 6-7 months on average and FC4 will continue that trend (7 months after FC3).

It’s a shame, then, that this article *twice* claims that Fedora users “have to fully upgrade up to three times a year” when that statement doesn’t bear any sort of inspection. The lifespan of a Fedora Core release before it goes into Fedora Legacy (where security/bug fixes are *still* released for that FC version anyway) is actually almost a year (FC2 is only just now moving into Fedora Legacy, some 11 months after its release).

I’m still running FC2 on our desktops/servers and will probably continue to do so until FC5 comes out (because I’ve found I can run FC3 RPMs on FC2 in some cases). There will hopefully be a few FC2 kernel security releases when it’s in Fedora Legacy, so I’m hoping to get over 18 months out of FC2, which I think isn’t bad for a free distro.

2005-04-19 3:47 pm

I use VMWare with CentOS 4 and it is a perfect stand-in for RHEL 4. It works exactly the same under VMWare as RHEL 4 does. I am sold on it. The updates through the RHN (pulsating exclamation point bubble) also work perfectly and seamlessly.

I hope they stick around. I heard bad things about White Box Linux and I specifically chose CentOS because it was the first one out and the first one to have CentOS-versions of RHN updates working. The fact that CentOS 4 was released nearly a MONTH before White Box Linux pretty much says it all.

2005-04-19 3:48 pm

Solaris still does not have ZFS available yet. Let’s continue this discussion when ZFS actually is available, supposedly in the next quarterly release.

2005-04-19 4:02 pm

Science and a service-based economy will eventualy win over the wishful “World War II”-model of marketing and closed-market systems.

2005-04-19 4:16 pm

this is what some of us has warned about for a very long time… the GPL death. Why would someone wanna pay for red hats stuff now?

Because, what redhat sells is support.

In fact this might even help Red Hat as more people will get fammilliar with their product. Guess from whom they will buy support when they find of need or money for it.

2005-04-19 5:31 pm

CentOS is a nice way to play with RHES without having to pay oodles of $$$ – but frankly as a system architect I want my Linux OS without bloat. Why is RH still starting up the sendmail daemon (even for non server installs)? How about other daemons like IRDA and ISDN? Why I am still stuck with ext2/ext3 filesystems on install? What about XFS, JFS and ReiserFS4?

I’m waiting for my Gentoo boys to come out with some good for the enterprise. And yes I AM a Gentoo fanboi because they’ve done something decent for the Linux community.

Milione

2005-04-19 6:07 pm

The default sendmail configuration isn’t set up to listen on the network. And even on desktop systems, as an admin, I kinda prefer to have system messages sent to the root account (and in turn where ever I happen to want root’s mail sent). Call it bloat if you well, but my opinion, it’s nice to use a distro that takes care of the little things for you so you don’t have to.

Also, if you took a second to glance through the irda and isdn init scripts, you’d realize that they don’t do a thing if the relevant hardware isn’t present. Trying running lsmod and ps and whatnot on a system that doesn’t have that sort of hardware and you’ll see what I mean. So I wouldn’t exactly call that bloat either.

As for XFS, JFS, and Reiserfs, each of those filesystems are available under Fedora. The problem with some of these filesystems however, is that they don’t support selinux. The stability of alternative filesytems is also debatable. That being the case, Fedora defaults to ext3.

Gentoo, it’s a great distro. Lately I’ve been running it at home on my desktop machine. But after the pain I just went through, just to upgrade my kernel, I can definitely state that I would not use Gentoo at work unless it goes through some drastic changes. Like I said, I don’t want to be bothered with the little things.

And forgive my ignorance, I’m just curious, but what does a system architect happen to do? Is this anything close to a system administrator? A rose by any other name…I hate to break it to you, but you don’t get my vote as sys admin of the year.

2005-04-19 6:13 pm

“I’m waiting for my Gentoo boys to come out with some good for the enterprise.”

Setting up gentoo might be somewhat more difficult and time consuming.Once everything is configured upgrading the kernel shouldn’t be painfull (on the contrary is my experience).You could use genkernel like: “genkernel –menuconfig all”,this way you stay in control about the kernel config and saves some boring type work.

In my opinion gentoo is one of the easiest to maintain after the initial install.

Like I said, I don’t want to be bothered with the little things.

Yes that’s gentoo,keeping you in control as much as possible:-)

2005-04-19 6:30 pm

but frankly as a system architect I want my Linux OS without bloat.

What kind of bloat?

Why is RH still starting up the sendmail daemon (even for non server installs)

Which product do you talk about? Given your title as system architecture, you should not have a problem to disable sendmail if you don’t like it.

Why I am still stuck with ext2/ext3 filesystems on install? What about XFS, JFS and ReiserFS4?

ext2/ext3 is the default filesystems worked by Red Hat. You can install XFS and Reiserfs with this command on boot: linux xfs or linux reisers. Reiserfs does not support SELinux. BTW, both RHEL4 and CentOs4 uses LVM partition by default. Still, given your title, you should make search about that.

I’m waiting for my Gentoo boys to come out with some good for the enterprise.

You managed to make Gentoo look bad. Most of the times, Gentoo fanboys like you hijack any distro topic to promote this distro (Gentoo). Seriously, Gentoo is not meant to run in entreprise environment unless you run your own local business and you are really an expert. No corporation will ever accept a distro that does not provide a support on critical mission.

2005-04-19 7:30 pm

CentOS needs to (maybe it already does) start offering support services (at about half of RedHat’s prices). Maybe RedHat will wake up then. Novell must be laughing at RedHat because I’m sure Novell still values IP.

2005-04-19 8:30 pm

Hello, I’ve been given an a chance to provide a GNU/Linux solution for a problem where I work. I was wondering if any body has any comparisions between CentOS and Whitebox Linux.

2005-04-19 9:10 pm

CentOS releases updates very very quickly after Red Hat does. They sometimes trail by little more than an hour. Whitebox has been known to let their updates slide longer than that.

Also, CentOS releases new versions of their system very quickly. WhiteBox still hasn’t released WBEL 4 yet, whereas CentOS 4 came shortly after RHEL 4 was released.

I would say to go with CentOS.

2005-04-19 9:43 pm

“CentOS needs to (maybe it already does) start offering support services (at about half of RedHat’s prices). Maybe RedHat will wake up then. Novell must be laughing at RedHat because I’m sure Novell still values IP.”

Only an idiot will by support from CentOS. What will a company get by buying support from them? The CentOS team doesn’t have the proper infrastructure, abilities, personal, or anything. That is a really lame suggestion.

Red Hat is actually priced very decently for what they sell support for. Support is not cheap and the pricing for RedHat will ensure it will be there when/if I need it.

While it might not make sense to pay for a simple DNS server, if I am running a 16 CPU monster with a 2 terabyte database, I think what RedHat is charging is extremely fair. The fact that RedHat is highpriced is actually good because that means that when I call RedHat, all the lame people in the world won’t be hogging up the phone lines because they are too stupid too figure out how to do something that is well documented.

Do what makes sense. Contribute a few dollars to CentOS for their effort but don’t expect support from them. Run most of your servers on CentOS. For your mission critical servers (WebSphere, DB2, Oracle, SAP, Lotus Domino, etc.) buy a license from RedHat. This way you won’t be out in the cold when disaster happens and at the same time you will have a very consistent enterprise to manage.

CentOS is a win win for everyone, for you and for RedHat.

2005-04-19 10:24 pm

This is an off topic question, but does anyone know what is going on with Dag Wieer’s repository and the Dries’ repository for RHEL4 RPM packages? It’s almost as if it has frozen….no new updates have been released.

Anyways, thx.

2005-04-19 10:58 pm

So let’s get this straight. The whole model for RedHat is services, or is RedHat really an insurance company? If the software does its job properly then there should be little need for support. The only thing I can think of is that RedHat is sort of an insurance company where if things go horribly wrong you can run to them.

Oh, and Slash, sorry to burst your bubble, but there is nothing magic about RedHat services. They don’t have exclusive control over uber-support personnel. RedHat does not have the trade secrets for “proper infrastructure, abilities, personal, or anything.”

Let’s hope that CentOS starts offering services. This should be a good business model for them.

2005-04-19 11:30 pm

”

So let’s get this straight. The whole model for RedHat is services, or is RedHat really an insurance company? If the software does its job properly then there should be little need for support. The only thing I can think of is that RedHat is sort of an insurance company where if things go horribly wrong you can run to them.

Oh, and Slash, sorry to burst your bubble, but there is nothing magic about RedHat services. They don’t have exclusive control over uber-support personnel. RedHat does not have the trade secrets for “proper infrastructure, abilities, personal, or anything.”

Let’s hope that CentOS starts offering services. This should be a good business model for them.

”

For one thing, CentOS is a good product, but, how are they going to offer professional services. CentOS does not have a headquarters you can contact for support, it would be more like this.

“Hi, I’m calling for support for my Oracle Database because Oracle won’t support it because it is running on CentOS”

“Sorry, can’t help you.”

NEXT CALLER

“Hi, my Postgresql server will not load, and I need it up right away”

“Okay, well, I have callers waiting on hold. Call Steve in Seattle (you have to cover the long distance by the way). He is one of our hackers there.”

“Okay, but what if he is not available.”

“Oh, well, we have some hackers down in Florida that may be able to help. They only joined the project last month and I’ve never met them, but they should be able to help you.”

“But I can’t afford the long distance”

“Well then ask for help on our forums and IRC”

“But that’s free to begin with, why am I paying you money”

“I don’t know to be quite honest”

Oh, and you could have the best damn software in the world, a major enterprise will still want support from a well respected company.

2005-04-19 11:40 pm

BTW, my last post was not meant to offend anyone on the CentOS team, I’m just pointing out that you DO need the proper infrastructure in place to deal with these kinds of things.

2005-04-20 1:36 am

Minimum requ’s for RH is something like 196 megs of ram and I don’t know about the processor requirements. Tis a tad bit heavy if your going GUI.

But its a server, no GUI needed.

2005-04-20 2:52 am

I have C-466 MHz CPU with 386 Mb SDRAM ( Compaq Deskpro SFF )

It’s not snappy/flashy/responsive as Slackware 10.0 is on the same PC but I’m more than happy with my copy.

I don’t really know why but after Mandrake 1o, Slackware 10 and SuSE 9,1 I’m back to RH flock with CetOS 4 on this mashine and I’m using Xandros Business edition 2,5 on other 1 GHz PC. I’m not up to the speed but reliability !

I’m pretty sure it will run on C-400 with 128 Mb SDRAM but I’d think it would be a bit slow machine.

2005-04-20 2:54 am

I use it at work, and I know linux pretty good now and I have not used there support once, there has never been a need for me to call them.

That support if for Admins that don’t have a clue about Linux.

The updates and security fixes are nice, but nothing I could not get from places like Debian or Gentoo for free.

If I had my way at work, RH EL would be out the door and Gentoo would be in. It’s so much easier to install software on Gentoo and even Debian, for example I needed postfix with Postgres support, the supplied Redhat one did not have it, so I went to rebuild the RPM from source and their .spec file did not have a option for Postgres, just Mysql, so instead of fooling around with the RPM hell, I just built Postfix from source and compiled in the PG support myself.

Now on Gentoo to get the same thing I would have simply added postgres to the make.conf use list and simply did a emerge postfix, and it about 5 minutes a nice shiny new postfix install perfectly optimized for my server.

I then wanted to install PFlogsumm a log file analylser for postfix, I then had to track down all the perl dependencies and it took 45 minuts to get the thing working. I did the same thing on Gentoo with a emerge pflogsumm and I had it installed an working in 2 minutes dependencies and all.

RH EL is just OK, there are much better alternatives available if you look.

2005-04-20 3:49 am

So RedHat’s entire business model relies on (A) Clueless Linux system administrators and/or (B) shoddy software that needs to be constantly patched.

2005-04-20 4:07 am

So RedHat’s entire business model relies on (A) Clueless Linux system administrators and/or (B) shoddy software that needs to be constantly patched.

But it works so well for microsoft! /antimsrhetoric

seriously though, redhat still exists as a company, that says they are doing something right. the company i work for has 3 very competent linux/unix admins (and by competent i mean can do pretty much anything needed from basic administration to software development for our particular needs). we have a redhat support contract for the same reason phone carriers buy support contracts on their equipment. when you are running something that is critical to the business you like the assurance that a support contract gives you. redhat’s prices are VERY reasonable IMO and as long as they continue to do what they do i know i will continue to support them in any way i can.

2005-04-20 5:09 am

The gentleman here has listed exactly why CentOS/RHEL or whatever you want to call it is so limited. I challenge all of you to do the following:

Real saavy linux guys know why Gentoo was such a breath of fresh air to linux community – for years we’ve had to deal with the hell of dependencies (and no RPM’s do not solve that problem fully either). With portage all those issues are gone gone gone gone.

Now hardware on the other hand yes I do wholeheartedly agree with having support contracts – much harder to troubleshoot hardware based issues than software ones.

2005-04-20 10:52 am

Now run that same xfce installer on Gentoo. Guess what? Welcome yourself to dependency hell. Sure, I know what you’re going to say, xfce is already in portage, but that’s really not much different from having an xfce rpm for centos, is it?

And rpm frontends like urpmi, yast, up2date, and red carpet, etc. have been around for years and years. Seems to me that all of those take care of dependencies just fine. Or you disagree?

As for support contracts, if you’re a pretty competent admin I’ll agree, you may never need to call up Red Hat or whoever. However, even when you are competent, support can be a nice thing to have. I know I’ve wished I had it a few times. And I mean, if you can’t imagine a company, that has “real Linux guys”, in a situation where it would be nice to have support, then frankly you’re severely lacking in imagination. But then even if you’re imagination impaired, just think about this: Red Hat is making money. So there ya go.

2005-04-20 10:31 pm

When an enterprise pays for a subscription to RHEL, they pay for testing, certification (for big enterprise software like Oracle), indemnification, and yes, support. These are all things that are very very very very important to enterprises. In fact, many large enterprises will not look at any kind of software that does not offer those things, and will gladly pay top dollar to companies that do offer those things. Thus, the huge success of Red Hat, the biggest and most profitable Linux company in the world.

And just because some geek in an organization likes to play with Gentoo or Debian on his/her home boxes, it does not make it okay for their employer. In fact, if that geek pushes for Gentoo over Red Hat, without support, indemnifacation, and certification on big enterprise software, and something goes wrong, that geek can kiss his/her job goodbye.

So RHEL offers a great overall value to enterprises – it delivers a great, robust, efficient platform, and offers great support that enterprises rely on. And at the same time Red Hat provides the totally free Fedora Core, and using GPL software, allows the existence of CentOS, and thus building up the ever-so-valuable mindshare that supports subscriptions to RHEL.

Red Hat has earned it’s success.

BTW – I run Fedora Core (among others), and it’s a damn fine distro. I really think Red Hat has it’s act together, both technically and as a business.

2005-04-21 2:48 am

not really a fair comparason. if you are allowed to emerge xfce then i am allowed to yum install xfce or apt-get install xfce. and quite frankly all of the good linux admins i know avoid gentoo like the plague on production boxes. if they want compiled from source then they do it by hand, otherwise install from packages. portage is nothing new and certainly not the end all be all that gentoo worshippers make it out to be (and yes i have used gentoo for longer than a month just to give it a fair shake, i prefer precompiled packages with a proper package manager in all honesty)